Making A Killing
by IAmSemi
Summary: About some OC mercenaries, possible SF team in later chapters. T for swearing, not too sure where I'm going with this.
1. Chapter 1

"This is fucking bullshit." I said over the sound of pulsating engines. A voice across from me snorted, and the owner looked up with a smile across his face.

"You think everything's bullshit, don't you Koch? Shit, we may as well call you Captain Bullshit. Getting paid ain't we?" He said, and laughed a short, staccato laugh. I smirked and gave my retort.

"Fuck off." We carried on in relative silence after that, with the occasional sound of shuffling as someone moved on their seat or checked their belt kit or weapon. The interior of the troop transport was cramped and bathed in a dim red light coming from a single bulb in the ceiling, caged in thick black wire to prevent it being dislodged by a careless movement.

There was me and three other guys sitting in the transport, weapons between our legs and necks bent to keep our heads from colliding with the ceiling. The man across from me was a canine, brown-furred and sunken featured. Twelve years as a private contractor tended to do that to you. He went by the moniker of Grim, and acted as the team leader. The man next to him was a grey vulpine named Blaine and our resident support specialist; resting against his left leg was a 8mm GPMG feeding from a 200 round cloth bag. Firing at 700rpm, that was a lot of suppressive fire. Sitting next to me was a black feline by the name of Jansen. Our weapons were a pick and mix of various types; being mercenaries, we were free to take whichever weapons we felt were appropriate for the job. I myself carried a semi automatic 7.5mm battle rifle feeding from 20 round box mags, Grim toted a 4.8mm carbine rifle and Jansen took a 10mm DMR with a midrange scope, with a 8mm "short" submachine gun for closer ranges. We were the definition of irregular; our uniforms being a mix of privately purchased battledress and civilian outdoor clothing. I was kitted out in a flecktarn combat jacket and grey civilian cargo trousers, with assault boots on my feet and a surplus helmet protecting my skull. The others were dressed similarly.

We were on our way to initiate a big fuck off firefight and blow shit up, to put it bluntly. More precisely, we were advancing on revolutionaries hiding out in the Katina desert; they were broadcasting an anti-government message on most civilian com frequencies and there had been quite a few attacks on politicians and the like recently; just last week a car bomb had exploded, killing two soldiers and wounding another as they patrolled the streets of Corneria. They called themselves the People's Revolutionary Forces and attempted to seem like an organised, regular force, but in reality they were a bunch of amateurs with some radio equipment and rusty old rifles. They sounded like no problem to us; we expected to be in and out in less than fifteen minutes. The driver of the transport opened a hatch between the transport bay and the driver's cab and yelled in.

"Approaching the stronghold now, roughly 2 klicks out." This was the signal we had been waiting for. We made ready our weapons and gave our belt kit a final check, the chorus of clacks as we cocked our weapons coming together in the confined space. I checked my safety catch and my chinstrap, affirming that my helmet wouldn't jump off as I left the vehicle and open me up to have my brain spattered over the sand.

"One K!" the driver shouted, and I gripped a handle on the ceiling and pulled myself into a half standing, half squatting position, ready to scream out of the transport and get rounds down as soon as the ramp came down into the desert sand. The rest of the guys did the same.

"You ready?" Asked Grim, swaying a little as he held onto the handle. I nodded and heard a few murmurs of affirmation from behind me.

"Quarter of a K, good luck fellas!" shouted the driver, and I felt the transport slow to a crawl. The hydraulics of the ramp began to hiss as the ramp came down, sunlight filtering in and triggering the reaction coating on my goggles, turning them from a transparent shade to a dark brown shade to protect my eyes from the sudden burst of sunlight. The ramp thudded into the sand and Grim began to shout as we sprang into action.

"Dismount! Dismount! Set up a firing line!" This basically meant, get your arse out and start eating sand. I ran down the ramp and sprinted about ten meters out before dropping to the floor, sending a cloud of sand and dust up. Rounds beat the air over my head and thudded into the sand in front of me as rifle and machinegun fire sprang up from the broadcast station some two hundred meters in front of me. The occasional red or green bolt flew overhead too; these guys were packing blasters. Shame they couldn't shoot for shit.

"Get rounds down!" Grim shouted, stating the obvious. I raised my rifle and bought the station into my sights, aiming for a first floor balcony from which I could see long bursts emanating. I flicked off my safety and curled my finger round the trigger, ready to fire. I took a second to steady my aim on the machine gunner and squeezed. The rifle kicked and spat out a smoking casing, the thump of the powder exploding lost in the sound of the other guy's fire. Blaine was firing off long, fifteen-round bursts to get the enemy's heads down so we could move, and before long he reached his desired effect.

"Move up! Move up!" Grim shouted as he sprang to his feet. I pushed up and started running towards a pile of rocks. Rounds from the MG spat up bits of sand by my feet and sparked off the rock, making a _peyooow_ sound not unlike those you hear in the movies. I dived behind the biggest rock I could see, landing hard on my elbows. I shook off the momentary jarring and raised my rifle again, adrenaline pumping through my veins and my heart pounding. I fired off four more rounds, sending puffs of plaster shooting off the building as the bullets impacted. A casing bounced off the rock in front of me and managed to work its way into my sleeve; this was less then comfortable for me since it was singing my right forearm. I ignored it and carried on firing, managing to hit my man on the balcony and sending him tumbling onto the sand below with a yelp. A round hit the rock in front of me and sent a shower of sparks flying into the air, causing me to flinch and stop firing momentarily. The pause in my firing was long enough for the enemy to bring an automatic weapon to bear on me, cracking the air over my head and missing me so closely I could feel the wind from the bullets on my face. "_Fuck__this,_" I thought, and rolled back behind the rock, emerging on the other side with a clear line of sight on the guy who was giving me so much grief. "_Surprise,__fucker!_" I thought as I lined my sights up on his chest and pumped two rounds into him. He fell back, obscured from view by the wall under the window.

"Move!" Shouted Grim, having decided the enemy was sufficiently suppressed. I darted towards a depression in the sand, throwing myself into it and taking care to make sure I was covered. Raising my rifle, I took aim at a fighter armed with a blaster rifle; he had the potential to do some real damage. As I squeezed the trigger, instead of the normal loud, bass bang and the _kaching_ of the working parts moving, I heard a click. Empty magazine.

"Magazine!" I shouted as I slithered backwards, detaching the mag from my rifle and fumbling with my belt kit for another, full magazine. Just fifty meters from the station now, the intensity of fire was horrendous; I could barely put my head up for fear of being shot. I managed to extract a magazine from the pouch and clipped it on, recocking my rifle and trying to take aim at a window without taking a bullet in the head. I succeeded, and managed to get a few rounds into the guy with the blaster. That was one blaster gone, out of about three.

"Blaine, give us cover!" Grim yelled above the noise of the firefight, and I heard a rapid series of staccato cracks as he gave the building a taste of its own medicine. I saw guys ducking for cover under the windowsills, not that it would do them any good. Blaine's MG was loaded with armour-piercing rounds, and as well as armour they were damn good at penetrating walls. Confirming my thoughts, I heard several cries from the building and smiled.

"Move to the building, prepare to breach!" Grim shouted and I threw myself onto my feet, sprinting for the door. I flattened myself against the wall on the left hand side of the door and Blaine and Jansen joined me, Grim going on the right side of the door as he carried the breach charge. I felt a hand on my shoulder and readied myself. Grim placed the block of Taram-3 on the door and extracted the clacker from his belt kit, retreating from the door a little. Our little conga line did the same too. Blaine lifted the safety catch from the clacker and squeezed it together, the Taram-3 detonating with a boom and bright orange flame. At that moment, I threw myself through the door with my rifle raised, Blaine and Jansen following me in. The room was dark and bare, with a folding table in the centre with a few plastic chairs dotted around. Half eaten meals sat on the table; we must have interrupted them in the middle of lunch. On the right there was a dead body, bleeding from the centre of his chest. A blaster rifle lay nearby. Grim started barking orders as he entered the room.

"Get upstairs! Go! Go!" Taking heed, I took point as we moved up the stairs towards an open doorway. I could hear hurried voices coming from within the room and held my hand out to the rest of the squad, palm facing outwards, to signal a stop. Letting my weapon hang from its sling I opened my grenade pouch and extricated a spherical, black and silver M450 frag grenade. Twisting the primer cap, I hurled the grenade into the room with a cry of "Grenade out!" and then dropped as low as I could on the stairs. I felt the blast wave rush over my head before I heard the explosion, a hot waft of air that ruffled the fur on the back of my neck. Several screams came from the room and I motioned for us to enter. Rifle raised, I stepped through the doorway and began sidestepping to minimise my chances of being shot, if anyone even survived the grenade. Which they didn't. Bodies lay torn and bloody, slumped over radio equipment or crumpled on the floor. One man was groaning as he lay on the floor, blood pouring from his stomach as the grenade had opened a pretty nasty gash which was bleeding all over the place. I turned him over with my boot and he looked into my eyes with his, despair and fear etched across his face. I swung my rifle round and fired a single shot, closing his eyes for good. Blood sprayed onto the muzzle of the rifle and sizzled slightly; it was still hot from the rounds I had fired.

"Fucking hell Koch, you're not supposed to do that." Came a voice from behind me. It was Jansen. I turned to face him.

"What, and waste medical supplies patching up one of the enemy? No thanks; they do that mercy-nursey shit in the army. We don't seem to be the army now do we?" I replied. Jansen bit his tongue.

"Will you ladies stop arguing and get over here?" Snapped Grim. I shook my head and stepped over bodies towards him. "We've found our radio equipment. Plant charges and prepare to blow this shit." He said. I nodded and reached in my belt kit for a block of Taram-3, extracting it after a few seconds and slapping it onto one of the radios. I stuck in a det pin and turned on the clacker.

"Set." I said. The word chorused around the room.

"Good, now we get out and blow this sky high." Grim said. We piled down the stairs and retreated about fifty meters from the building, clackers in hand. Grim started counting down.

"Three… Two… One… Blow it!" He shouted, and I banged on the clacker three times. The building shook as the Taram-3 charges detonated inside, and smoke billowed out of the windows as the noise of the explosion, a rushing _whoosh_ sound, reached us. Whoops and cheers erupted around me, but I wasn't one for making loud noises. I just smiled, feeling satisfied with a job relatively well done. Grim pressed the send button on his radio and spoke into it, presumably arranging our transport back to the Katina spaceport.

"Driver says he'll be three minutes max. Wait out." Came the word from Grim, and I took it as a cue to relax, taking off my helmet and sinking into a sitting position in the sand. Around me, the rest of the guys did the same. We sat there in silence, reflecting on the job and the money that was in it for us; four thousand credits each seemed pretty reasonable for what we had just done. We saw the transport off in the distance, shimmering in the heat, and stood up feeling positively elated. We'd carried out the job flawlessly. It pulled up near us and the driver leaned out of the window, a grin across his face.

"Fuckin' good job guys, I'll get your duty frees at the port!" he beamed. We weren't going to say no to that. He opened the ramp and we piled back in to the transport to begin the journey back.


	2. Chapter 2

I sat alone in a corner booth, a stiff drink on the table in front of me and a pistol tucked into my waistband. In a spaceport like this, you could never be too careful protection wise; they tended to teem with your average gutter trash out to take your hard earned cash, and often armed with the tools of the trade to boot. Too often had a mercenary been fleeced of his money in a port like this because he wasn't packing, and I wasn't too keen to join the list. The rest of the guys were off somewhere else, probably taking inventory or making repairs, but since I was the only one without a real responsibility other than fighting I got the most downtime.

This was the kind of place I felt at home, in the gritty bare metal establishments frequented by the sorts of people you'd rather not meet at all, let alone in a dark alleyway at eleven at night. Neon light bathed the street outside as the occasional person filed past, dimly illuminating their features in dim colours. The bar itself stood across from me, a small counter with a few shelves full of grimy bottles behind it, and a stocky barman between them. He'd polished the same glass with a dirty rag about six times since I sat down, and seemed to be more focused on me than the glass. Irked, I gave him a glance, my eyes meeting his for a split second before he looked back down at the glass. It was starting to squeak. I reached for my glass and threw the contents down my throat, wincing a little as the alcohol burned its way down. I carried on eyeing the barkeep as he polished the glass, darting furtive glances at me as he did. I decided not to hang around, fearing the worst, and chucked a few coins onto the table as I stood up to leave, giving the barkeep a last glance as I walked out of the large, roll-up door onto the cold street, dimly illuminated by failing neon signs and the light of the stars above. I turned left towards the general direction of the port itself, starting down the street as a cold breeze blew past me.

I pulled out my PDA and fired a quick message off to Grim telling him I was on my way back, and if I wasn't back in ten minutes to trace the PDA's location and come to my aid. Deciding to take a detour, I turned right into an alleyway, not the smartest thing to do given where I was, but my better judgement was already numbed by the alcohol and I was getting sleepy too. About halfway down, I realised something was wrong and turned just in time for a hard push from behind to send me sprawling. I hit the ground in a semi-roll and pulled the pistol from my waistband, flicking off the safety catch and bringing it up to the aim. Before I could pull the trigger, however, a hard kick sent it spiralling from my grasp; it collided with a wall and discharged harmlessly into the air. I groaned as pain shot through my fingers and the back of my hand. Another kick, this time to my stomach, winded me and made me double up into a foetal position as I choked and gasped for air.

"Fuck!" I spat in desperation, trying to identify my assailant, but in the darkness it proved difficult to figure out where they were, let alone see their face. A kick to the head knocked me dizzy, my head spinning as I rolled on the floor trying to shield myself. I cursed as more kicks bruised me, finally giving up when I heard- and felt- a rib break. Another kick to the head rendered me unconscious, my last thoughts before blacking out being "That bastard barman."

**AN: Yeah, pretty short chapter by all means but I just want to show I'm still alive and kicking, and also give my creative muscles a bit of a flex. Review as you wish! :D**


	3. Chapter 3

Water splashed onto my head, soaking my shoulders and face and tumbling me out of my stupor, bringing me round to be greeted with a splitting headache and a cotton-dry mouth. A hand slapped the side of my face.

"Come on, wake up."

I opened my eyes, and as they began to focus, I saw I was in a dark room with grey breeze block walls. A single, cobweb covered light bulb hung from the ceiling, illuminating the room in a pale yellow glow and casting shadows across the floor. In front of me stood three figures in a row, the leftmost being a tall, dark furred canine wearing typical spacer attire, the second a short, chubby lupine dressed similarly, and the last the barman, a smug look on his face as he dropped a tin bucket. It clanged on the concrete floor for a second before rolling onto one of its sides.

"So. I guess you think you're pretty hot shit, do you?" the chubby one said.

"Maybe I do... who the fuck are you?" I replied, the beginnings of a cheeky smile curling the corners of my mouth. That landed me a smack across my cheek.

"We're asking the questions around here. Your little firefight on Katina lost us some of our best guys, and then you had the bad luck to wind up in this port. You got an ace up your sleeve to get you out of this?" he said, a cocky grin on his face.

"So you're PRF? If those guys were some of your best, you're in a shit state... You guys really think you've got a chance, don't you?" I asked. The bulb in the ceiling flickered for a second as the taller one spoke, slowly and deliberately.

"Rudy... go get me a razor blade. We can have some fun with this one." From there, I knew I was in trouble. Tied to a chair in a seedy backwater spaceport, with the prospect of being carved up like a joint of meat seeming very, very real, I'll admit I was scared. The chubby one, presumably Rudy, walked out of the room with a backwards glance at me. I leant back and closed my eyes, listening to the hum of the bulb as I contemplated the situation. The door opened and closed again, and Rudy slid a razor blade onto a small table.  
>"Hey Jan, did you leave the bar door open?" he asked the taller one, who shook his head.<p>

"Not if I remember right. You closed it again, right?"

"Right." The one called Jan picked up the blade between his fingertips, examining it with feigned interest. He smirked and approached me.

"Open wide, sunshine." he sneered and grabbed my jaws, forcing his fingers between them in an effort to open my mouth. I grit my teeth as he squeezed tighter, forcing my cheeks into my teeth. I could taste the warm, coppery taste of blood already, my teeth opening up cuts in my cheeks as I grit my teeth harder and harder.

"Come on, you greasy little fuck." he muttered, letting go for a second if only to backhand me. If he was trying to open my mouth, he succeeded; my lips slipped open for a fraction of a second, and before I knew it there was cold steel in my mouth, the sharp edges cutting into my cheeks and tongue. I could taste blood, warm and raw and primal, as pain blossomed out of the cuts in my mouth. Jan smiled, a grim, warmthless smile as he bought his fist back. _Smack_. He caught me on my right cheek, forcing the razor into my tongue. More blood. I groaned, just before the back of his left fist sent my head whipping around into my left shoulder. I spat blood and shook my head, feeling cuts opening in my mouth as the razor moved. He wound his fist back as far as he could, twisting his upper body as he prepared for the strike. I winced and pushed myself back into the seat, getting ready for the blow of the fist and the pain of the razor cutting into my mouth. It never came. I heard a crash, and just as I opened my eyes, I saw the door swing open and a figure holding a pistol moved in. I kicked myself to the floor, landing on my wrists; there was nothing I could do but wait until the smoke cleared and see who was still standing. More shots rang out like a series of kicks assaulting my eardrums, ten, eleven, twelve shots and a voice all swirled into one. I yelled as someone fell on top of me, warm sticky blood coursing onto my chest as their life drained out of them.

"Koch? Koch?" I heard a voice shout.

"Here!" I shouted. "Get this stiff off me!" footsteps converged on me, and the body was lifted away, blood still dripping from the wound. I opened my eyes and saw Grim, a still smoking pistol in his right hand and a folded knife in his left. He flipped the chair over onto its side, smashing me into the floor, and cut the ropes holding my wrists to the chair. I felt a hand pulling me to my feet and caught my balance, staggering for a second or two as I righted myself.

"You alright, Koch?" he asked, thrusting a revolver into my hand. I nodded.

"Seen better, but I'm good. Now let's get the fuck out of here." I replied. Grim smirked.

"Sounds good. Let's move." He moved towards the door, and I was about to follow before I heard something scrape on the floor. Looking down, I saw the barman clutching his guts as he rolled in agony, trying to stem the flow of blood from a wound in his stomach. I raised the revolver and pulled the trigger, putting an end to his life as the gunsmoke curled up from the barrel. We walked back out of the bar and onto the street, the artificial lights at the top of the dome telling me it was now daytime, or what passed for it on this station. I must have been out for at least three hours; where was Grim in that time?

"What took you so long, you old bastard?" I asked as we stepped into the road.

"The reception on these rocks is appalling, you know how it is." He said. I nodded.

"Certainly do. Bit of a shit time to have your reception fuck up, eh?" I joked.

"Heh, yeah. What even got you into that mess, anyway?" Grim asked as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out and lit up without even offering one to me, the tight bastard. I grinned.

"You know, the usual banter. Couple of guys came in, gave me some grief, I responded. Just my shit luck they were PRF." I said. Grim grinned.

"Amen right there. Anyway, we better head back to the hangar; _Unflinching_'s all fuelled up and ready to go." He said, and we walked off into the artificial sunlight.


End file.
